


What the Water Gave Me

by elleflies



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Fuckruary 2021 (Lucifer TV), Fuckruary 2021 - Size Queen, Masturbation, Merpeople, Ocean Sex, Oral Sex, Post-Season/Series 01, Sexual Content, Smut, Underwater Sex, Weird Biology, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:23:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29724822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elleflies/pseuds/elleflies
Summary: After a contentious divorce, Chloe takes time off work to heal and reconnect with her roots. Traveling north, she searches for solitude, but the Devil of the Deep has other ideas
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 34
Kudos: 82





	What the Water Gave Me

**Author's Note:**

> Well. This is a bit of a weird one. I had a whole slew of Fuckruary fics planned and then, like usual, one of my fins turned into a monster. I blame [Spinnerdolphin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpinnerDolphin/pseuds/SpinnerDolphin), who held my hand and enabled me the whole way. It turns out that if you spam someone with weird marine biology memes and facts, eventually you end up throwing your own hat into the merm fic ring. It's a slippery (heh) slope people!

_What am I doing?_ Chloe thinks as she pulls into the parking lot of a run-down grocery store tucked into the Canadian woods. 

The trip was a spur-of-the-moment decision borne of too much wine and a black cloud of depression. The walls of her mother’s house had narrowed and tightened, and the only thing keeping her from spiraling was the picture on her phone: a small cabin deep in the woods, dappled with light.

And now here she is. Thousands of miles from Los Angeles, from the home she and Dan used to share, from the smirking faces of her colleagues at the precinct, and from Trixie. 

“Darling, _really?_ ” her mother had said over the phone as Chloe had piled clothes into her suitcase. “There are better places to recover. Go to Italy; enjoy some pasta. Find a handsome lover. But the Canadian woods? It sounds so dreary.” 

“I need to get away,” Chloe had said as she’d stuffed another bra into her bag. 

She’d taken two planes, picked up her rental car, and then, as the sun was sinking over the horizon, boarded a ferry from the mainland. It had been an arduous day of travel to the little island, and now her last stop is a grocery store before heading to her rental cabin. 

The store is tiny compared to the ones dotting Los Angeles, but it has the basics. Chloe grabs a basket and swings down the aisles, collecting enough food that she won’t have to come back for at least a week.

Her jet-lagged, world-weary brain stutters and turns as it tries to click on to what she’s looking at. Bagged milk. Milk comes in bags in Canada? She’s definitely not in Los Angeles anymore. And then she sees the bottles of chocolate milk. 

_Trixie loves chocolate milk_. 

Tears well up and there’s a lump in her throat when she swallows. This is not how she saw her night going: crying in the middle of a tiny grocery store in full view of the two guys at the register. There’s a cabin waiting for her, and she can cry all she wants over her brand new divorce and the resulting custody battle that had left her an absentee parent in her daughter’s life. 

And with Malcolm—

It doesn’t bear thinking about. 

She grabs a small container of skim milk, shoves it into her basket, and heads for the checkout. 

The employee manning the checkout—a lean guy in his early 30s with a thick brown beard—leans on the counter, his eyes glazed in boredom. His friend, a tall man with an easy open face, chatters away, hands waving as if he’s excited. 

Chloe lingers behind the chit chatting pair, waiting for them to notice her. 

“Oh hey,” the man with the brown beard says. “I’ll get you checked out. Paul was just moving.” 

Paul snags Chloe’s basket and hands the items to his friend, who rings them up one by one. “I’ve not seen you around,” Paul says. “You visiting?” 

“Yeah, um. I’m renting a cabin,” Chloe replies, her tongue moving like lead in her mouth. “Just… had to get away from it all.” 

“One of the cabins down south? That’s a grand little area. Good beaches,” Paul replies. 

Chloe shakes her head. “I’m up north.” She doesn’t say where. The fallout from Palmetto is still fresh, as are the memories of unmarked cars driving by her house in the middle of the night.

Paul’s face lights up and Chloe doesn’t miss the way his friend rolls his eyes as he rings up her groceries. “You’re staying up at Bream Point!” 

Chloe narrows her eyes, and Paul shifts his weight from foot to foot. “I’m not a creeper,” he says. “It’s just… that’s where the Salish Siren lives.” 

“Weren’t you calling this thing the Sissywiddle just last week?” the cashier says.

“I’m work shopping names, Drew. This could be huge. Just think of the tourist dollars. Hell, _the Discovery Channel documentaries_. Build it up enough, and it could be massive for this town.” 

Personally, Chloe thinks calling the little conglomeration of buildings a town is being generous, but she has to admit that coming from Los Angeles, her perspective is skewed. 

“Besides,” Paul continues. “Salish Siren has a certain ring to it.”

“The Salish Sea is a hundred miles south, man. Even if this thing exists, it’s hanging out in the Pacific.” 

“Crap,” Paul says, and deflates across the checkout. 

Drew rings up a bag of apples. “You smoked too much weed and mistook sea lions barking for a cryptid. Plenty of things in the water, but dude, a weirdo sea creature isn’t one of them.” 

“I know what I saw.” Paul adjusts his beanie and frowns.

“Sure, man,” Drew replies, like it’s an old argument the two find comfortable.

“I’ve heard it,” Paul insists hotly.

Drew rolls his eyes and starts bagging Chloe’s groceries. 

“If you’re on the point late at night, you can hear its song reverberating across the ocean, sad and otherworldly.” Paul shudders. “I’m telling you. This thing can pull out all your desires.”

“Sure, Paul, whatever you say, man.” Drew turns to Chloe. “You need any help getting out to the car?”

“I’ll be fine.” Chloe loops her fingers through the plastic handles and heads for the exit, eager to get to her destination. 

“Miss,” Paul pipes up. “Please, be careful. We don’t know what’s out there. And if you hear singing, don’t go near the ocean.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Chloe promises.

* * *

The cabin is a cozy two-room affair. 

The main room is a combination kitchen-living room. A kitchenette in the corner. A wooden table to eat on, and a thick bookcase that sags under the weight of the books it holds. The bedroom, just off to the side and separated with a drape in the doorway, contains a dresser and a wrought-iron bed. A thick patchwork quilt covers the mattress.

“Well,” Chloe mutters to herself, “I’m here.” She dumps her bag on the floor by the bed and puts away her groceries in the kitchenette. Milk, beer, sandwich meat, and cheese get stashed in the fridge. She’ll need more groceries at some point, and maybe this time Paul won’t be hanging around going on about sea monsters. An often ignored voice at the back of her head pipes up that the sea will provide if only she’ll go home. 

Except she’s not sure where home is anymore. 

And she knows she’s being obtuse. She knows where she really wants to be. But it’s been so long. 

Tomorrow she'll explore the woods surrounding the cabin and, if she works up the courage, maybe she'll venture toward the cold ocean churning away at the cliffs less than a mile away.

Regardless of Paul’s hopes and dreams for a sea monster to revitalize the tourism industry, Bream Point is far enough away from tourist spots and civilization that seeing another person isn’t a worry unless she ventures into town. And that's what she's after. Solitude. To remember, and to see if she can pull together the parts of herself she’s shoved so deep she’s not even sure they’re there anymore. 

One month. And at the end, she’ll reassume her dented armor and head home, or maybe she’ll sink into the cold ocean and give Paul that sea monster he’s so desperate to find. 

She tucks herself under the plush quilt and stares at the wooden ceiling. In the silence, she can just make out the roar of the waves.

_Tomorrow_ , she tells herself. 

She drifts off with the lull of the distant ocean in her ears.

* * *

Wakefulness comes slowly, and Chloe stretches her toes and decides she’s never going to leave. Not when her bed is warm and comfortable. 

So of course that’s when her phone buzzes on the nightstand. 

She rolls onto her side and groans, burying her face in the pillow and promising herself she’ll ignore the texts—she’s on vacation, not on call. Her phone buzzes with another text, and her resolve crumbles. Something could have happened to Trixie. She fumbles for her phone. One text from her mother and three from Dan. 

“Just checking in,” Dan’s text says. “Wanted 2 make sure U R okay.” She stares at the thumbs up emoji at the end of the text and wants to smash it into his face. 

“No problems. Got here fine,” she texts back. “Tell Trixie I love her.” 

Her mother, she ignores. She can’t deal with her mom’s brand of disappointment and cultivated ignorance. 

She leaves the warm cocoon of the bed, stashes the phone in the drawer, and gets ready for the day.

Chloe pulls up the hood of her raincoat as she follows the overgrown path. The forest floor is springy with moss and leaves, damp from rain the night before. It’s a beautiful walk and already she can feel the tension draining from her muscles. The trail peters out at a jumble of massive logs, bleached from exposure and time, thrown up on the edge of the beach by the waves of past storms. They’re not much of a barrier, and Chloe clambers across them with ease.

“Perfect,” Chloe mutters, once her feet hit the sand. She inhales and can taste the salt of the sea. A gull flies overhead, its raucous cry blending with the surf. 

Standing on the edge of the ocean was inevitable. She thought she’d avoid it, but she’d been deluding herself. Isn’t that what she’s good at? Deluding herself that her coworkers would see reason? That the separation and divorce wouldn’t be that bad? And what does she have to show for it?

She’s persona non grata at work. Closer to forty than thirty, divorced and, worst of all, Dan got custody of Trixie. 

She can’t even blame him for it—that’s the part that hurts the most. Her life fell apart so spectacularly it made sense for Trixie to stay with Dan. Chloe tries not to hope, but down the road… once Chloe pulls herself back together, they can renegotiate, try to figure this thing out. 

Once she figures herself out. 

Wave after wave crests and breaks, shattering against the beach and sucking back out. It’s soothing, this repetition. It makes her feel small and her problems inconsequential. What does her so-called human life matter next to the power of the ocean?

“Come on, Chloe. Quit moping,” she tells herself and adjusts her backpack straps as she ambles along the deserted beach. It’s exactly what she’d been hoping for. The tourist spots are miles away. Cell service is spotty, and any shops are at least an hour drive. 

There’s a boulder on the edge of the tree line that looks like the perfect hiding spot. She shucks her jacket, sweater, and bra. Boots, socks, jeans, and underwear follow, and she stuffs them into her waterproof backpack. A fallen tree leans against the boulder, and there’s a small hollow her bag slides into with ease. 

Fall is approaching, and with the wind whipping off the water, it’s cold. Too cold to be naked. Her skin pebbles. She crosses her arms over her chest and shivers.

It’s been twenty years, and there’s no guarantee this will work. It may be too late. If she’s forgotten—this could be the death of her. Pulled out to sea by the undertow, naked and cold. She wouldn’t last long. 

She could put her clothes back on and go for a hike. Poke some banana slugs and eat lunch on a fallen log. 

No. She came for this. If she chickens out, she’ll regret it for the rest of her life. 

Her skin prickles and tingles as she steps into the waves. The water is freezing, but she presses on, rocks and sand under her feet and waves slapping against her belly.

It might not work. And she’ll have yet one more thing to mourn. 

Chloe takes a deep breath, tips her face up to the gray sky, and mutters a prayer to the goddess her grandmother put so much faith in, and then she throws herself into the next wave. 

The cold water is a shock, but the tingle of salt water is everything she’s missed these past few years. She comes up for air, takes a deep breath, grounds her feet against the sandy bottom and swims for deeper water.

Her lungs burn with the need to surface, to breathe, her muscles scream as her outstretched arms come together in front of her body and then stroke back. Her feet kick and terror courses through her. 

_It’s not working_. 

She can’t breathe and scrambles for the surface, but it’s too late. The water tugs at her and she’s careening towards open water. Her head breaks the surface, and she gasps, once, twice, before the current pulls her back under. The knowledge is there, it’s so close. She just has to remember. 

The push and pull of the tide. The salt on her tongue. The way the water cradled her body. The water in her veins. The crash of the waves. The knowledge rushes back as her desperately kicking legs morph into a long, bronze-gray tail. Her pale underside gives way to a darker back, painted with faint stripes down to where her tail tapers into an elegant asymmetrical V-shape. Water flows over parched gills on her side for the first time in years, and Chloe can breathe. 

The undertow rockets her away from the beach, but now she’s a willing rider, swishing her tail experimentally, getting used to muscles she hasn’t used since she was fifteen and saw her mother’s family for the last time. 

The water isn’t cold anymore. Chloe rolls, enjoying the way it caresses her body. Her lateral line buzzes. The water swirls and with every movement she becomes more aware. It’s the vastness of the ocean, the feel of otters gamboling in the kelp, a hunting orca further out. Shorebirds diving for fish. They all move through the ocean and Chloe feels the movements in the current. 

The distant song of a humpback whale echoes through the expanse. She can feel them, further out to sea, the sweep of their great tails, the slide of their enormous bodies as they pursue a school of tiny bait fish. 

Why did she ever leave? 

Chloe dips her shoulder and angles downward, toward the darkness of the ocean floor. A school of cod scatters before her, darting into nooks and crannies in the rocks. She settles into an easy glide, now that she’s out of the current, her caudal fin moving from side to side.

Leaving the ocean had just… happened. She was the daughter of a Mer woman who’d left the sea for a life on the land.

As much as she loved the ocean, her life was on land. 

When her mother’s acting career had been taking off, she’d sent Chloe to the sea. With Dad working full time, foisting her onto her grandmother and aunts had been easier. She’d always looked forward to her grandmother’s arrival. The stately woman, always dressed in a brightly colored damp dress, would sweep Chloe into her arms and hum into her ear. They’d head back into the ocean, and Chloe would forget her parents were busy. There were other kids to swim with, and if that got boring, her aunts and grandmother were always happy for her company. 

But those childhood memories are hazy with time and nostalgia, and the last time she’d seen her sea family, she’d been fifteen years old and just cast as a supporting character in a Disney Channel show. 

Maybe life would have been easier if she hadn’t been born with an affinity for the sea. Her mother had hoped John Decker’s very human genes would prove dominant.

Chloe had always disappointed her mother. Story of her life. 

Trixie had taken after her paternal line, and since the salt and tide didn’t call to Trixie like it did to Chloe, she’d never felt the need to clue Dan in to her unique heritage. It was easier that way. She was going to spend her life with him on land, why would he need to know?

But with her divorce, losing joint custody, and the threats she’d received at work… this is all she wants. This freedom. The sheer joy of the water, indulging in a way of life she’d thought she’d left far behind. 

When the month ends… she’ll go back. Back to her mother’s house, to the child she no longer sees daily, and the coworkers that hate her. 

But today… today she has this. 

She has the ocean and a form she hasn’t inhabited in years. And with this form, comes a slew of sensations she’s forgotten until now. 

The lateral line that runs from her shoulders to her tail tingles as water washes over her, as if electricity is zipping under her skin. The cacophony of life under the waves threatens to overwhelm her senses. The tap tap tap of otters breaking open sea urchin shells, the chatter of passing fish, and the hum of a ship’s engine as it churns its way up the coast. It’s too much. Too overpowering.

A quick flick of her tail, and she arrows towards the rippling surface. The low clouds are a welcome sight, and Chloe pushes wet hair away from her face with relief. She rolls onto her back, spreads her arms and licks the salt from her lips.

A flock of gulls soars overhead, calling to each other, and Chloe knows she should dive, avoid the surface and hide like any good mer, but she can’t look away from the clouds.

Blond hair fans around her head in a golden halo. Below her navel, soft human flesh roughens into the fine sandpaper texture of her tail. She stretches and wiggles her fins: a tapered caudal fin, the small set of anal fins, and above those, where the junction of her legs would be if she were human, her pelvic fins. 

She runs her fingers over the soft skin between her pelvic fins and shudders at the sensations that spark through her body. Little frissons of pleasure and a tightening in her sex she doesn’t want to ignore. 

It’s been so long. _Too long_ , and she’s curious. There’s no one around to see, shore is miles away, and what’s a vacation without attempting to relax? Besides, it's just getting reacquainted with her body. Why shouldn’t she? 

Water sloshes over her chest as she traces back down to her pelvic fins and she tamps down on the nervousness and shame. Those are human emotions, and not one the mer embrace when it comes to their own sexuality. She’s spent too much time on land, absorbed too much of humanity, and maybe, if she wants to heal, she needs to let that go. 

Shivers run through her body as she strokes along the seam of her sex. The nature of a life in the ocean dictates mer anatomy, as it does for all aquatic creatures. From the navel up, a mer looks exactly like any other human, but from the waist down it's a different story. The folds of her sex are tucked away, revealed only when she’s relaxed and turned on. Her breath hitches as the soft lips of her sex part, and she dips her fingers into wet folds. 

Her gills flare and she gasps as her thumb rubs up to her clit, little bolts of pleasure shoot through her body. Her tail tenses, and the underwater clamor fades into nothing, as she curls her fingers in slippery folds. 

This long-neglected body is primed with need as her sex throbs, and she wishes, for a moment, that she had more than just her own fingers. Her sexual experiences as a mer were so long in the past and consisted of hesitant fumbling with teenage boys. As an adult with a range of sexual experiences in her past, getting to know her body this way is new and overwhelming. And freeing. Her thumb rubs around her clit, and she presses inwards towards her g-spot with a hitch of her hips. 

Pleasure washes over her as her body and her pelvic fins shiver and flick. Her orgasm crests like a wave and she gasps, back arching, as she comes to pieces in its wake. 

Awareness creeps in—the feel of the water as her tail sways from side to side, of her lateral line, still tingling with post-orgasmic bliss, her pelvic fins, her dorsal fin, and the cold wash of air over her breasts. A strand of wet hair sticks to her face. Instead of brushing it off, she allows herself to sink into the water, her body falling deeper and deeper, her arms stretching upwards. The top of the ocean looks like the roof of the world, dented and distorted as the water ripples. 

The ocean darkens as she sinks, but her vision remains sharp. She’s built to see underwater. She knows this to the very depths of her being. Her mother hadn’t wanted her swimming for most of her early childhood, but her dad had put his foot down and insisted that Chloe learn to swim like a human. That if she was to live a life on land, his daughter’s life mattered more than Penelope’s fears. Her first swimming lesson had taken place at a friend’s house. It was one of her first memories: putting her head under the water, blinking her eyes open, and swishing her hands in front of her face, marveling at how blurry they were and how wrong it felt. Her first foray into the ocean was revelatory: the transformation brought on by salt and tide, the acuity of her vision, and the information overload from her lateral line.

Chloe flips herself over and flicks her tail, heading into the kelp forest hugging the coast. The kelp fronds brush against her body as she twists her way through the swaying stalks, enjoying the way the kelp tickles her skin and how the underwater forest’s denizens hide as she passes.

A curious otter chitters at her from above but darts out of sight as soon as it spots the curve of her fins. She twines herself through the kelp, diving lower in search of delicious things to eat. It’s been ages since she’s had a fresh urchin or scallop, and she’s overcome with a desire to taste them again. 

The day passes as Chloe explores the ocean and readjusts to her body. A pod of curious dolphins accompanies her for a time, clicking and frolicking around her. She doesn’t have their speed, but they don’t mind if she holds onto a dorsal fin as they careen through the water. 

They don’t stick around long. They too have hunting to do, and she waves goodbye as their cheerful whistles and clicks depart into the distance. As much fun as an open ocean hunt would be, Chloe knows her limits, and she’d only hold them back. Mers are strange creatures, not quite of the natural world, not quite supernatural. They straddle both, but they also have their place in the food web, opportunists, taking advantage of whatever they find—depending on quiet patience and searching out prey with diligence and secrecy. Chloe would never mention this to her mother, but she thinks it’s those aspects that made her a good detective. 

Not that that matters anymore. Who knows if she’ll even keep her job. What with… well, things aren’t friendly back at the precinct since Palmetto. 

The ocean dims as dusk creeps in, and Chloe swishes her way back to the shore. She pokes her head out of the water just beyond the surf line and scans the beach. The last thing she needs is for a human to see her floundering her way onto shore with a tail instead of legs. 

Thankfully, the only signs of life are the sandpipers running along the surf in search of food. 

The most dangerous moment is the transition. Mer bodies need time to realize they’ve left the salt and tides behind. No one is to see—the rule has been pounded into her since she was little. She could be discovered, captured even, and the world would know. Her mother instilled it in her head out of loathing, her grandmother out of fear. But it’s a truth Chloe knows down to her bones. 

A wave slams onto the beach, and Chloe coasts in after it. She tumbles as the wave crests and pushes herself up the rocks once it releases her, thrashing her tail to jerk her body forward in short, inelegant increments. The gills on either side of her torso flare and rasp, desperate for water to flow. Panic wells up, even as her human lungs kick in and take over. She grapples at the rounded rocks, arching her back and gaping as she sucks air in through her mouth. Cold hits like a wave as her mer body morphs into its human shape.

“Cold,” Chloe mutters as she picks herself up off the rocky beach. She darts for the boulder by the tree line, arms crossed over her chest and skin wracked with shivers. “Cold, cold, cold, cold.”

Her clothes are where she left them, the backpack undisturbed, and she dresses as fast as she can, uncaring that she didn’t bring a towel to dry off with. She wrings out her dripping wet hair as best she can, twists it up to shove it under a beanie and hustles down the path back to the cabin.

It’s mildly depressing walking into the empty cabin after her foray into the ocean. She stands in the doorway, cold and damp and missing the comfort and freedom of the deep. Staying in the water overnight is an option she’d considered before coming back. There’s an allure to falling asleep wrapped in a piece of kelp and lulled by the push and pull of the tides. But she promised Trixie she would call every night.

One hot shower later, she crawls into fleece pajamas and phones her daughter with a cup of steaming tea by her elbow.

“Mommy!” Trixie cries. “I miss you!”

It takes Chloe a moment to answer. The sound of Trixie’s voice, clear and happy, chokes her up in ways she wasn’t expecting. “I miss you too, baby,” Chloe says, and she wipes a tear from her eye.

“Did you go swimming, mommy?”

“Oh, it’s far too cold for that, baby.”

“Sure, Mom,” Trixie replies, not fooled for an instant. Dan is human, a perfectly normal man, and Chloe had never revealed her secret to him. When he wanted to go surfing, Chloe would sit in the sand and claim that she just didn’t enjoy swimming. Dan had laughed and joked about the big bad LAPD officer being afraid of getting her toes pinched by a crab. He and Trixie had spent hours frolicking in the waves with Chloe on the sidelines, wanting beyond anything to join them.

But Dan would never understand.

“Did you see seals?” Trixie asks, an excited undercurrent to her voice. 

“I sure did. They popped their heads out of the ocean, and I think they were looking at me.”

Trixie squeals and peppers her with questions. Chloe coasts along, happy to be talking with her daughter and missing her every second.

She’s glad she came, but she wishes it wasn’t because of a contentious divorce and a toxic work environment. She wishes Malcolm had never died.

“Daddy says it’s bedtime,” Trixie says, put out. 

“I wouldn’t want you to miss school tomorrow because you were too busy talking to me,” Chloe replies.

“It’s okay, Mommy.”

“I love you,” Chloe tells her and wishes she could imprint the words on Trixie’s heart and soul so she goes through the world with no doubt her mother loves her. It’s why a return to the ocean, to the solitude and happiness of the waves, will never be possible. 

“I love you too!” Trixie chirps and the line goes silent, leaving Chloe with the stillness of the cabin and her cooling tea.

The walls close in and oppressive silence bears down.

She goes to bed feeling like her skin is itchy and tight.

**Author's Note:**

> Massive thanks to [Ariaadagio](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariaadagio/pseuds/ariaadagio) and [venividivictorious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venividivictorious/pseuds/venividivictorious) for the beta, as well as my dearest darlingest [Sarahmonious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahmonious/pseuds/sarahmonious), who's put eyeballs on every fic I've ever posted. Oh, and thanks to [Matchstick_dolly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/matchstick_dolly/pseuds/matchstick_dolly), who laughed at me when I realized that this fic was going to achieve Size Queen status (it was a well deserved laugh). 
> 
> THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT SPINNER!


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